This paper presents direct, lived episodes from Paul of his childhood in Neepsend, and rehousing to the Parson Cross estate, a few miles north. Alternating with these memories is commentary from Eddy, which seeks to briefly contextualize them. These contexts include the interacting physical and social geographies of Neepsend over time, the nature of trauma, memory, and the psychiatry of PTSD.

The paper is obsessed with the River Don, and the turbulence of a student death in a raft race. The authors will touch on their ritual performance of ‘abreaction’ for the river, a Deleuzian ‘body without organs’.

The authors will also touch on other local flows and migrations, including the daily flow of non-resident day and night workers and their visitors into this now depopulated and virtually post-industrial area.

Biographies

Paul Allender works part-time as a Teaching Associate in the School of Education at the University of Sheffield and part-time as an engaged artist on Parson Cross council estate in Sheffield on a Yorkshire Artspace funded programme. He lived in Neepsend in Sheffield from age 0-11 and moved from there to Parson Cross.

Eddy Dreadnought is a full-time contemporary artist. Last year he devised a walk around Upperthorpe, posted on the Occursus website, and showed related drawings and a DVD at a PlastiCités event. His favourite part of Upperthorpe is Neepsend, and he is delighted to collaborate with Paul who grew up there.

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Published by PlastiCités

Amanda Crawley Jackson lectures in French at the University of Sheffield (UK). She specialises in existentialist philosophy, urban spatialities and contemporary visual arts from France and the French-speaking world.
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Cloaked in sulphurous smog, grey as approaching night the blackened shapes of Neepsend rose – a dark, mysterious sight
The gas works by the station steps, factories by the Don the pulse of Sheffield’s industries once beating – now long gone
Striking hammers silenced, huge rolls no longer turn, flames of hell in the furnace well
have long since ceased to burn.
Yet, a constant in this changing world, the Don, refreshed and free, still wends its way through Neepsend on its journey to the sea.

Striking hammers silenced now, giant rollers no longer turn, licking flames of furnaces have long since ceased to to burn ing,

Industry gone now the working man – a ‘workhorse’ from the day he was born – is surplus to requirements and viewed with scorn in this ‘technological age’ which, at every stage, sees the middle class advancing, under-privileged dancing to their tune in voluntary roles – many unpaid – only their time and skills to trade in exchange for a place in society. A lowly role – a serf no less but it’s better than lounging on the dole I guess. Yet the ones who prospered through free uni places, throw their advantage back in the faces of working men who paid through the ages, funding those uni’s out of their wages. Yet few in those swollen ranks of men, entered those hallowed halls back then and now the offspring of those chosen few look down on the likes of me and you. A new generation flaunting their power, growing ever more arrogant with each passing hour. Sadly, the demise of production jobs has heightened the power of the suited snobs, the mentors advising, despising the poor and unemployed their own spirits buoyed whilst believing that somehow it’s their vocation – to teach and lift us to a higher station. Blinded, they view us all as the same and keep themselves well ahead of the game because without poverty, ignorance and need their own jobs would flounder and they too would bleed – as they join the ranks of those on the dole and find themselves tumbling into the hole, joining the ones whose pride they once stole with their verses, descriptions of strangers unmet and yet …… we will never forget this land of milk and honey was built on the efforts of men making money that funded the jewels in England’s crown – the NHS – the welfare state – a legacy handed down on a plate to the needy, the weak and all whose lives might otherwise be bleak. Sadly those folk with grimy clothes and blackened face have over the years now fallen from grace and given way to a suited breed manning well paid charitable jobs in their own hour of need. Charity – bah humbug – it’s all a disgrace, a scar on the face of the whole human race.